please critique my fruited berliner

after 2+ weeks I just transferred my berliner onto fruit

about 4 gallons went into secondary with:

2.8 lbs mango
2.5 lbs kiwi (no idea what this will do)
.8 lbs of passionfruit (I wanted more but the little buggers are super expensive)
2.5 lbs of guava (this is a tossup because I used a couple different kinds of guava based on availability. the smaller ones had a way stronger taste. don't know what I'll do about using these in the future)

these measurements are the volume after removing skin / mango pits etc.

I'm going to try and leave the beer on the fruit for ~3 weeks. When transferring from primary I probably got more yeast kicked up than I'd want, but oh well.

the samples of the berliner itself tasted great. Many purists would probably question why i'm adding the fruit at all.

Hopefully the fruit treatment works out well, I will definitely be brewing this beer again and trying other fruit additions if this works out well.

 

I kinda hope you're right, and that seems to be the consensus from people I talk to. However, when I tasted the fresh guava on its own, it was an incredibly mild flavor (like a very mild strawberry?) maybe I didn't let them get ripe enough, but they were pretty soft and visually / tactile - seemed nearly overripe. does anyone have experience using guava?

 

Alright! its done. Couple of thoughts below:

Came out super clean. Probably my best beer I've made. Having said that, definitely could use some work for the next attempt.

I ended up using frozen fruit in secondary that I did not pasteurize, didn't see any real problems with that plan. I left the beer on fruit for 4 weeks and it imparted an awesome tropical fruit flavor, but definitely way more subtle than I anticipated. There was also a secondary fermentation from the fruits sugars but the beer doesn't seem particularly watery / bitter / worse off.

I'd imagine that this more subtle flavor is because the guava was itself far more subtle than I anticipated, I don't think the kiwi imparted a ton of flavor, and passionfruit (available in stores near me) is WAY too expensive for the amount I think you'd need.

I will definitely try this again (don't know when) but I will up the mango and passionfruit, and try to find some pink guava, maybe a little past ripe while not adding kiwi. I may also see if a cactus pear or something else cool would be good with this blend.

A few things I could use some help with:

after I racked from the secondary fermentation bucket to the keg I was left with about a gallon that I was unable to get into the keg with my auto siphon / paint strainer bag setup, mainly due to the amount of fruit. Is there anyway to press or squeeze this fruit in order to extract more flavor / beer? When I tasted what was left in the bucket it tasted incredibly "tropical" and I feel like i missed out by not getting all of it. Counter to this, I didn't want to spend too much time messing around with this and introduce too much oxygen.

I was toying around with adding some (maybe 1/3 - 1/2 pound) lactose towards the end of the second boil to add some body (this gets away from a more traditional berliner, but I'm already adding passion fruit so I'd say that lines been pretty thoroughly crossed). I wouldn't mind a bit of sweetness, but I'm mainly looking for more body / mouthfeel, is that the right path to take?


I am actually going to try this recipe again tomorrow but use cherries (thoughts on pounds per gallon?) and maybe a vanilla tincture - instead of the tropical fruit.


Finally, I was going to add a picture but I don't really have any idea how..

Thanks

 

that head definitely goes away fast, had to take that photo immediately after pouring from the picnic tap